Transportation is an important aspect of a city's operations. As majority of the population in cities rely on public transportation, public transportation operators and city planners typically invest their resources and time to improve public transportation systems and services. For example, public transportation operators provide schedule of their services for commuters on the web, through mobile apps or display boards at stations to improve the use of the public transportation and facilitate commuters in planning their traveling time. However, unforeseen circumstances such as delays due to heavy traffic or accidents may cause a vehicle to deviate from its scheduled timetable, resulting the schedule to be inaccurate and unreliable. Long waiting time tends to cause bad experience for commuters as they are unaware of the current location of the vehicles and are unable to manage their time effectively. Furthermore, the unavailability or inaccuracy of systems that predict the estimated arrival time of vehicles or its schedule remains an important concern that needs to be addressed.
From the foregoing discussion, it is desirable to provide an accurate and reliable prediction of arrival time of transportation vehicles.